Along EU Borders

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Origin & Tasks

Tasks

Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, promotes,
coordinates and develops European border management in line with the EU
fundamental rights charter and the concept of Integrated Border Management.

To help
identify migratory patterns as well as trends in cross-border criminal
activities, Frontex analyses data related to the situation at and beyond EU’s
external borders. It monitors the situation at the borders and helps border
authorities to share information with Member States. The agency also carries
out vulnerability assessments to evaluate the capacity and readiness of each
Member State to face challenges at its external borders, including migratory
pressure.

Frontex
coordinates and organises joint operations and rapid border interventions to
assist Member States at the external borders, including in humanitarian
emergencies and rescue at sea. The agency deploys European Border and Coast
Guard teams, including a pool of at least 1 500 border guards and other
relevant staff to be deployed in rapid interventions. The members of the rapid
reaction pool must be provided by Member States upon request by the agency. It
also deploys vessels, aircraft, vehicles and other technical equipment provided
by Member States in its operations. In addition, Frontex may carry out
operations on the territory of non-EU countries neighbouring at least one
Member State, in case of migratory pressure at a non-EU country’s border.

Frontex,
the European Border and Coast Guard, supports Member States with screening,
debriefing, identification and fingerprinting of migrants. Officers deployed by
the agencyrefer and provide initial information to people who need, or
wish to apply for, international protection, cooperating with the European
Asylum Support Office (EASO) and national authorities. It is the national
authorities, not Frontex, who decide which person is entitled to international
protection.

The
agency assists EU Member States in forced returns of people who have exhausted
all legal avenues to legitimise their stay within the EU. This help includes
obtaining travel documents for the returnees by working closely with consular
authorities of the relevant non-EU countries. It can also organise voluntary
departures of nationals of non-EU countries who were issued return decisions by
Member State authorities. Frontex also organises return operations on its own
initiative and “collecting return operations”, where returnees are returned
with escort officers and transportation provided by their countries of origin.
It has created several pools of return experts to be deployed in Member States
when needed.

Frontex
supports the cooperation between law enforcement authorities, EU agencies and
customs at sea borders. Vessels and aircraft deployed in its operations also
collect and share information relevant to fisheries control, detection of
pollution and compliance with maritime regulations. The agency works closely
with European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA) and European Maritime Safety
Agency (EMSA) to implement multipurpose operations. In these operations,
vessels and aircraft deployed for border surveillance can also be used for
fishing and environmental monitoring.

Frontex
focuses on preventing smuggling, human trafficking and terrorism as well as
many other cross-border crimes. It shares any relevant intelligence gathered
during its operations with relevant national authorities and Europol.

The agency is the centre of expertise in the
area of border control. It develops training curricula and specialised courses
in a variety of areas to guarantee the highest levels of professional knowledge
among border guards across Europe. It also supports search and rescue
operations that arise during border surveillance operations at sea.

Origin

The
ideas that led to the creation of Frontex have a deep history in the European
project. Fostering the free movement of people has been an important objective
of European integration. In 1957, free movement of goods, persons, services and
capital were identified as foundations of the Community in the Treaty of Rome.

Schengen

During
the 1980s, five Member States (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the
Netherlands) decided to create a common area of free movement – a territory
without internal borders. In 1985, they signed the first agreement in a small
town in Luxembourg called Schengen – an agreement that was followed in1990 by a
Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement.

When the
“Schengen area” – a territory in which the free movement of persons - entered
into force in 1995, checks at the internal borders were abolished and a single
external border was created. Slowly, border control, as well as the rules
governing visas and the right to asylum, became common for all Schengen countries.

In order
to keep a balance between freedom and security, participating Member States
agreed to introduce additional measures focusing on cooperation and
coordination of the work of the police and judicial authorities. Because
organised crime networks do not respect borders, this cooperation became key to
safeguarding internal security.

In 1999, with the signing of the Treaty of
Amsterdam, this intergovernmental cooperation was incorporated into the EU
framework.

Towards Frontex

Since
1999 the European Council on Justice and Home Affairs has taken several steps
towards further strengthening cooperation in the area of migration, asylum and
security.

In the
border management field, this led to the creation of the External Border
Practitioners Common Unit - a group composed of members of the Strategic
Committee on Immigration, Frontiers and Asylum (SCIFA) and heads of national
border control services.

The Common Unit coordinated national projects of
Ad-Hoc Centres on Border Control. Their task was to oversee EU-wide pilot
projects and to implement common operations related to border management.

Frontex is born

Two years
after the establishment of "ad-hoc" centres the European Council
decided to go a step further. With the objective of improving procedures and
working methods of the Common Unit, Council Regulation (EC) 2007/2004 of 26
October 2004 led to the establishment of the European Agency for the Management
of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the
European Union (Frontex).

This
Regulation was repealed by Regulation (EU) 2016/1624 of 14 September 2016, establishing
Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency.